With Both Hands

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Law

The Long View 2004-08-16: New Jersey; Antichrist; Prison; Kill Bill 2

John's occasional comments on New Jersey politics were always fascinating to me. New Jersey is very much another world to this native of the American West. Even our scandals seems different. A recurring theme of John's was that the increasing harshness of criminal sentencing was an

The Long View 2004-05-17: Sloppy Justice; Crystal Chapel; Reenchantment

I always enjoy John's articles on law. He was a lawyer by education and trade, he mostly worked as a legal editor, helping to compile the vast tomes in which our laws are codified. I enjoy them, but I try not to have too firm of an opinion

The Long View 2003-12-11: McCain-Feingold; Iraq Contracts: The Human Gaia Effect; Nixon the Nazgul

I am not an expert in elections law, but I do find it remarkable that John felt that the long term impact of the McCain – Feingold Act would be to ultimately weaken American political parties to the point where a celebrity could run for President without really needing to heed

The Long View 2002-07-02: Innocence is no Excuse

John's specialty was business law: boring things like securities and the UCC. I can see why he turned to millennialism [kidding!]. In passing, he notes the securities law has a great deal more to do with regulation than legistation per se. This is true in my field as

The Long View 2002-07-05: The International Criminal Court

Partly as a matter of personality, and partly as a matter of profession, I care very much about the letter of the law. Thus I find myself very sympathetic to John's legal reading of the Rome Statue that governs the International Criminal Court. Since I am not a

The Long View 2002-07-01: Don't Pick Fights about God

John talks a lot of sense here. It is pretty easy to get wrapped around the axle on issues of religious freedom, but the most important take-away here is that First Amendment law as applied to the states is a very recent invention, and the overt purpose of it was

The Long View 2002-04-11: Tobacco, Guns, and Slavery Reparations

This was John's specialty, and it shows. Twelve years later, these topics are still topical, although they have evolved in interesting ways. Tobacco has become quite the pariah following the capitulation of the tobacco companies, but it isn't done yet. Hipsters insist on smoking even though